Real-driving emissions analysis to create national legislation based on remote sensing

The Spanish Government, DGT and CIEMAT, worked with Opus RSE to perform a very important remote sensing project in Madrid. The CORETRA project aimed to improve air quality
through a significant reduction in road traffic emissions based on direct measurement of road emissions.

The final goal: Create national legislation based on remote sensing technology

The initiative, launched by the Centre for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research of Spain (Ciemat), followed the guidelines set out in the Air Plan 2013,
which defined the use of remote measurement techniques for the identification of "high emitting" vehicles, with the intention of eliminating them from the current fleet or correcting their
emissions.

Location

The project was executed in 4 months around the city of Madrid, covering a total of 28 different locations and analyzing more than 195.000
vehicles.

FIELD CAMPAIGN

Results

1. The gap between the Euro Standard limts and the real-driving
emissions is increasing with time. Newer vehicles does not imply lower
emissions. Particularly significant is the high NO levels for diesel passenger cars.

2. Identifying only 6,4% of the most emitting vehicles (HE), a reduction in CO, HC and NO of 39,5%, 38,3% and 19,1% respectively can be achieved.

3. Within the HE group (6,4%), 25,6% are Euro 5 diesel passenger cars

4. Repairing the most emitting vehicles (6,4%) would result, at National level:

Reduction of 266.685 tons of CO per year.

Reduction of 16.943 tons of HC per year.

Reduction of 229.807 tons of NO per year.

Emissions savings of 14,8% for CO, 2,8% for HC and 22,7% for NO compared to the “Inventory of Air Emissions in Spain” (MAGRAMA,
2012)”

Emissions reduction would result in more than 1.700 M€ savings.

National legislation

The project results showed that the existing regulations regarding technical approvals and inspections of vehicles in Spain are not sufficient to solve the real problem of air pollution, since
the circulation of high emitting vehicles cannot be avoided.

Therefore, Opus RSE and Ciemat defined the limits of each pollutant, above which a vehicle will be determined as HE, when measured by an
RSD.

After CORETRA project, the Spanish Goverment has created a draft legislation, which includes RSD technology for measuring and identifying high emitters, that has not yet been published
definitively:

“Draft Royal Decree regulating the emission of pollutants from the engines of vehicles on public roads”

"This royal decree provides for the possibility of emissions control to be carried out not only by traffic authorities, but also by remote sensing equipment.
This means that automating the control of pollutant emissions from vehicle engines is possible, something already planned for commercial vehicles circulating on Spanish
territory. As a further development of this emission control, this royal decree establishes the maximum emissions values for the detection of highly polluting vehicles, for
emission regulations to be complied with by motor vehicles."

News & media

LIFE GySTRA project: 2 years CONTINUOUS monitoring of real-driving emissions

Global system for Sustainable TRAffic emissions management

After the great results of the CORETRA project, the European Union decided to award Opus RSE and its consortium a LIFE project, named GySTRA. During this project,
two RSDs will be continuously measuring traffic emissions in Madrid for two years.

This continuous monitoring project is going to be very important, as it will allow us to know the temporal evolution of real-driving emissions over a long period of time. In addition, the
huge amount of data to be collected will serve to analyse extensively all the parameters and characteristics associated with traffic emission levels.